The sky wept above us, rain slipping down my cheeks instead of tears. Alkimos’s death was a sharp pain in my belly—the realization that I’d had a grandfather, and now I’d never get to know him—but for some reason, I was hollowed out by it, unable to cry. I stared at the grave, as the dirt slowly filled it, clutching Zuhra’s hand, as I had so many times, but now there were secrets and lies between us, when there never had been before.
When the rain intensified, Sami said something, but her voice glanced over me without the words penetrating. Zuhra suddenly stiffened beside me, her hand tightening on mine. I felt a surge of shock go through her. I glanced up and sucked in a sharp breath. The hedge was open, the gate exposed, two Paladin—a male and a female—standing there.
“Cyrus? Melia?” Sachiel shouted to be heard over the increasing fury of the storm. “Where are your gryphons?”
The pair shared a look, their unfamiliar faces etched with grief.
“Gone,” the male—Cyrus—said as he opened the gate and ushered the woman to precede him into the courtyard.
That one word made me go cold, the memory of Paladin fire blasting toward two gryphons seared in my mind.
“What do you mean ‘gone’? What happened? Where have you been?”
“We need to get out of the storm!” my mother yelled over another deafening clap of thunder.
“She’s right—it’s only going to get worse!” Sami shouted.
As if to prove her right, lightning struck close enough that for half a second everything was lit bright white and then in the instant that darkness enveloped the grounds once more, thunder exploded around us, so loud I ducked, clapping my hands over my ears.
Adelric, who hadn’t wanted to give up on finishing the burial, finally relented. “Everyone back to the citadel!” He waved his hands at the group, his words barely audible over the rage of the storm. “Tell us what happened inside!”
We all gathered in the dining room, where Sami had built a fire before the burial, and the food she’d prepared was waiting for us. It was vegetable stew tonight, simple but flavorful.
I put a few spoonfuls in my bowl to appease my mother’s hawklike gaze, but couldn’t bring myself to eat, my stomach clenched too tight from what I’d seen in my room—that I hadn’t dared tell anyone about yet—and my head fuzzy from the sleeping herbs Sami had snuck into the tea Mother forced me to drink.
The new pair huddled close together across from my parents, both of their eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. They were covered in mud and what appeared to be partially dried blood splatters. Sachiel, at the head of the table, kept looking at them while everyone else quickly served themselves. Lorina, Ivan, Loukas, and Raidyn all sat on the same side of the table. Zuhra sat on my left and Halvor on my right, with Sami next to him. Whether consciously or not, somehow all the Paladin except for my father had sat together, facing the rest of us.
Once everyone served themselves, Sachiel looked to Cyrus and Melia. “What happened? Did you find the jakla?”
Cyrus was medium height and build, with brown hair and a sprinkling of freckles. Melia was shorter but stocky, with dusty blond hair and a sunburn on her nose. They held hands on the table, both of them trembling. At Sachiel’s question, Cyrus’s knuckles whitened.
“Yes. We found him.”
Melia shuddered.
I wanted to leave. I wanted to hide. I could do nothing but sit there, frozen to my seat with guilt, bearing the weight of his atrocities, though I had no ability to stop Barloc.
“He … he was trying to hide his tracks by walking in the river.”
No. No, no, no no no no …
“We set up a trap for him, thinking he’d completed the change and we could attack him.” Cyrus paused and swallowed, his gaze on their clasped hands. “We were wrong.”
Everyone stared in silence, the vegetable stew forgotten in front of them. Everyone except me—who had seen him in that river, had felt the moment when he’d known the Paladin had found him, had watched him attack two gryphons—
“I’m sorry to make you share something that is obviously … difficult.” Sachiel’s voice was as gentle as I’d ever heard it; I hadn’t realized her capable of such compassion. “But we must know what happened.”
I clutched my hands in my lap, willing myself to stay calm somehow as she spoke to the survivors.
A muscle in the corner of Cyrus’s eye ticked. “There were four of us. Nicabar and Gen were the lure, and we were the closers.”
Melia’s shoulders began to shake; Cyrus wrapped his arm around her, pulling her in close.
“He found them before we got there and attacked. We got there as quickly as possible, but he slaughtered all of our gryphons and had Nicabar and Gen cornered. They tried to defend themselves, but he absorbed every bit of power they blasted at him. There was nothing we could do. We only escaped because … because Nicabar … he…” Cyrus’s voice broke. He shook his head, unable to continue.
Sachiel tensed. “Are they…?”
Cyrus stared down at the table, quaking almost as badly as the woman beside him. It took several moments before he responded. “They weren’t dead when we fled, but … I don’t know how they would have survived.”
The plates and bowls on the table rattled when Sachiel slammed her fist down on the thick wooden plank with a guttural curse. I was hardly aware of anyone else’s reactions to the ghastly news; the painful abyss inside me gaped open even wider from Cyrus’s story, constricting my lungs, making it hard to breathe.
“I hate to be the one to point this out,” Loukas said, low and apologetic, “but I can only think of one reason why he would have kept them alive.”
Melia startled at the sound of his voice. When she glanced up and saw Loukas, she shrank back farther into Cyrus’s embrace. Even Cyrus scowled at him, his arm tightening around Melia.
Loukas flushed and looked down.
It took a second for his meaning to hit me. I turned to my father, horror blooming in my chest, like a fresh wound. He would have waited to kill them to use them first. To drain them as he had me. If Barloc had ripped the power from both of them too …
Father swore, his face blanching. “Sachiel, what were their strengths? What powers could he now possess?”
The other general’s teeth were clenched, her eyes flashing even brighter than normal. It wasn’t until she blinked a few times that I realized she was holding back tears.
“They were both fire-wielders, nothing more. But they were both strong and good and—” She broke off with a harsh shake of her head.
Father moved as though he would reach out to her, but she jerked away. “I’m so sorry. I know how painful it is to lose members of your battalion.”
Sachiel didn’t respond.
“I’ve never heard of a jakla that ripped power from three different Paladin.” Sharmaine almost seemed to be talking to herself, her face as white as the blouse she wore.
Raidyn put his hand over hers; she turned to look up at him, stricken. Zuhra stiffened beside me but remained silent.
“This is all my fault,” Halvor whispered. “If only I’d refused to bring him here.”
Even though I was struggling myself—the black hole within pulsing, painful, and bottomless—his acute guilt and misery skimmed the edges of my own suffering. Imitating Raidyn, I reached out to squeeze Halvor’s closest hand, resting on his leg. He immediately grasped my fingers, clutching them tightly.
“What’s done is done, and there’s no use trying to assign blame.” Father was the only one who responded, though his attempt at reassurance felt hollow. “You didn’t know what he was planning.”
I didn’t even know what to say to Halvor. If they’d never come, no one would have died. Barloc would never have been given the chance to rip the power from me, leaving me empty and broken.
But … if they’d never come, I would have still been lost in the roar, the four of us still trapped behind the hedge we’d believed to be immovable. I wouldn’t have met Halvor, wouldn’t have known what it was to care about a boy the way I did for him, wouldn’t have known how powerful a kiss could be. My father wouldn’t have returned to us, Zuhra wouldn’t have met our grandparents and Raidyn and all the other Paladin, and discovered that she, too, had Paladin power. Was all the suffering worth the good that had also come?
“If he somehow has absorbed the power from three Paladin … how will we ever stop him now?” Lorina asked.
The room fell completely silent, except for the ping ping ping of the rain lashing the windows.
Sachiel pushed away her untouched bowl. “I hate to agree with Adelric, but if we do this, then we need to split up like I suggested earlier. Half of us need to go after him, and the other half stay here in case he somehow makes it back before the other group catches him.”
“What possible chance would only half of us have against a jakla wielding the power of three Paladin?” Sharmaine choked out.
“And how would they find him?” Ivan added.
There was a heavy pause before Sachiel announced, “We set a trap.”
“A trap?” My father’s eyebrows lifted, but the corners of his lips turned down.
Panic, part ice, part acidic fire, flashed through my body. I hadn’t told her yet—how did she know? I didn’t even know if I could find Barloc through the connection we had.
“Yes. A trap. We bait him with something he would be unable to resist. And when he shows up, we kill him the old-fashioned way—with cold, hard steel.”
“Bait,” Father repeated slowly, his eyes narrowing. “What kind of bait?”
Sachiel’s gaze moved past him to where Zuhra and I sat. “Your other daughter’s power.”
“No!” Mother gasped.
Zuhra sucked in a breath beside me. Raidyn’s gaze snapped to her, the whites of his eyes visible all around his blue-flame irises.
No. Not Zuhra. I stared at Sachiel in horror. She didn’t know then—she hadn’t figured it out.
“If he learns she’s an enhancer, he won’t be able to resist trying to steal her power, as well. If we use Loukas to—”
Before she could finish, my father roared, “Absolutely not! How dare you even suggest such a thing!”
“Do you have a better suggestion? He must be stopped, Adelric!”
“You think I don’t know that?” He shoved back his seat, jumping to his feet. “He killed my father and very nearly Inara. How dare you—”
“It would work!” she cut him off, just as furious. “And we can only pray to the Great God that he doesn’t start attacking humans before we get to him!”
“Why would he attack humans?” Melia finally looked up.
Suddenly everyone was talking, yelling, gesturing, a cacophony of angry chaos that drowned out even the storm raging outside. As the voices rose louder and louder, I lost track of what anyone was saying. A strange buzzing started to accompany the painful beat of my heart and the tightness in my lungs that was making me completely breathless.
Before I could think better of it, I shoved my chair back and stood. Without a word of explanation, I rushed from the room. The empty hallway pulsed with shadows that undulated in the heavy humidity from the storm, as though the citadel were so nervous about the fury of the wind and rain lashing at its windows and walls that it was sweating.
I leaned against the wall, clutching at my blouse, struggling to breathe. I vaguely heard the door open and shut nearby, but I didn’t even turn toward whoever it was. It took every ounce of my concentration just to stay on my feet.
“Nara.” Zuhra’s familiar voice was a soothing respite from the buzzing in my head. It was nothing like the roar; this noise was made of dizziness and not enough air, and blood pounding too hard, and emptiness where there should have been power. “Do you want to go lie down? I can ask Sami to make you some more tea, if you think that will help.”
Her life had just been offered up on an altar by Sachiel, and yet here she was, coming after me, trying to comfort me. Though I should have found the strength to ask if she was all right, or what had been decided, or tell her what was happening to me, I couldn’t resist her offer. I nodded. Zuhra gently took my arm and guided me through the dark hallways that felt as if they were closing in on us. Occasional bursts of lightning momentarily blinded me, making me stumble, but Zuhra was always there, holding me up, guiding me forward.
Until, after far longer than it normally took, we reached my room. Zuhra opened the door and ushered me in.
“Do you want help changing? Or do you want to lie down now?”
I stood in the middle of my room, trembling and still struggling to breathe. “I—I don’t know,” I barely managed to force out through my strangled throat.
“I think you should lie down,” Zuhra decided. “Here, climb in, and then I’ll hurry and go get you some more tea to help you rest.”
She helped me crawl into bed and, just like when I was little—on rare nights when I was lucid and could remember her doing it—she tucked my sheets around me, cocooning me tightly in the safety of my bed.
“I’ll be right back,” she promised, softly sweeping a few stray hairs off my forehead. Her hand was warm and soft, and I didn’t want her to go, but I couldn’t speak, and with one last long look at me, her eyebrows knitted together, she hurried out the door.
I stared up at the ceiling, at the skeletal shadows of the trees outside when lightning sent their corpses skulking across my room, and the swelling darkness when the flashes of light receded. Thunder roared through the stone walls, and rain lashed at the windows; the storm seemed determined to tear the citadel apart, but though it shuddered beneath the onslaught, it held tight.
I’d always been afraid of the dark, but now it terrified me. Darkness brought him—it gave me glimpses into the mind of my would-be murderer.
I’d seen the moment before he’d slaughtered four gryphons and two more Paladin. I’d seen him in the river where they’d tracked him, moments before they died. And no one else knew that I had.
Just breathe, I told myself, with as much force as I could muster. But it wasn’t long before I started to gasp again. Control was nearly impossible—especially because the pain in my chest kept creeping further and further out into my body, making it harder than ever to get enough air. Though Zuhra had promised to hurry, it still felt like an eternity before she finally came back, a teacup clinking against the plate she balanced.
“Oh, Nara!” She rushed to sit beside my bed when she came in and saw me struggling. “Here you go,” she said, helping me lean up enough to be able to drink the slightly bitter concoction. Now that I knew it had sleeping herbs in it, they were all I could taste. “I’m sorry it took a little bit—I had to go get Sami from the dining hall.”
I took another big sip, praying it would work again. “What did they decide?” I managed to ask.
Zuhra shrugged. “Don’t worry about that right now.” I could sense her fear, but my own was so much stronger, I could barely focus on her answer, let alone press her for more.
You have to tell her.
You can’t ever tell anyone.
“Zuhra … I … I need…” I tried to force the words out, but my entire body began to shake, my stomach cramped so hard, I could barely keep down the little tea I’d swallowed.
Zuhra stroked a hair back from my clammy cheek. “Shhh,” she whispered. “You don’t need to talk right now. Just breathe. Do you want me to stay with you for a little bit? Until the tea takes effect? I can read you a story, just like I used to. It might help you calm down.” She tucked the sheets in tighter around my torso, her hands firm, and warm, and sure, her presence a balm.
Despite myself, despite knowing I couldn’t keep this to myself any longer, I nodded. First thing in the morning, when the sun was up, when the light of day chased back the shadows of the night, when I could breathe again … I would tell her. Nothing would happen tonight—not even Barloc could do anything in this storm. She was safe until then.
The same few books we’d read over and over as children were stacked on a shelf of my dresser from years gone by. Zuhra took one out and settled back into the chair beside my bed.
“There was once a young girl who dreamed such beautiful dreams they seemed real to her,” she began, the words comforting in their familiarity, her voice soft, as the rain continued to pound against my window.
I closed my eyes and let the words flow over and through me, carrying me away from the storm, the pain inside, the tightness in my lungs, and the horror of the memories that still assailed me.